Civil Rights issues and discrimination in the job market. Taking a look at statistics on the availability of employment and advancement for women and minorities like in the early twenty first century.

Discrimination in the Job Marketby Sharon Mooney

Society has made progress since the civil rights movement, however there is no way to deny racism and similar prejudice exists, not excluded from within the modern job market. I felt a worthwhile place to start proving this point would be through statistics.

First taking a look at discrimination against women, we can gather the majority of poor in America are females, many being of minority status.

POVERTY FACT SHEETPoverty Among Women

There are more women in the total population of the United States than men and there are more poor women than poor men in the United States. The total population of the United States is 266,218,000 and of that number 135,865,000 are females and 130,353,000 are males. The total population of poor in the United States is 36,529,000 which is 13.7% of the total population. There are 20,918,000 females that are poor which is 15.4% of the total female population and 57.2% of the total poverty population. There are 15,611,000 males who are poor which is 12.0% of the total population of males and 42.7% of the total poverty population. [...] gender plays a role in the poverty profile and women are more likely to be poor than men.www.ohioline.osu.edu/

In a report by Sam Middlemiss, Senior Lecturer in Law, The Robert Gordon University states: "The term coined in the United States to cover this type of behaviour is lookism and in the UK is aesthetic labour." [...] Defined in the sixth edition of the Collins English Dictionary as “the hiring of employees for their appearance or accent in an attempt to enhance the image of the company." www.law.gla.ac.uk

Middlemiss goes on to state:

“A survey of skills needs in hotels, restaurant, pubs and bars, indicated that 85% of employers ranked personal presentation and appearance in third place - above initiative, communication skills or even ability to follow instructions.”

Far too much emphasis is placed upon appearances of individuals, whether it be their race, gender, their attractiveness or lack thereof, in the job market. [This would include one's skin color]. People should be judged as individuals based on their qualifications versus their exterior appearance. Perhaps, as the old saying has it, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Meaning, individuals who know their opportunities for employment in a stable and rewarding career are limited, perhaps feel less motivated to attempt acquiring the skills necessary to compete."

RACE FACTOR IN EMPLOYMENTAccording to an expirament that was performed by Poverty Action Lab, with race in mind, the final results revealed an overwhelmingly apparent discrimination based on race. Resumes were submitted for the jobs listed in newspaper classifieds under sales, administrative, and clerical positions. Part of the resumes submitted contained information leading the employer to believe the submission was from a minority applicant, for instance submitting the application under a name likely to belong to a minority "Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones". Poverty Action Lab concluded:

1. Resumes with white names received 50% more callbacks than those with black names.

2. There is evidence that the returns to improving credentials for whites is much higher than for blacks. Specifically, for resumes with white names, higher quality resumes received 30% more callbacks than low quality ones. For resumes with black names, the higher quality resumes did not receive significantly more callbacks.

3. Federal contractors and employers who list "Equal Opportunity Employer" in their ad discriminate as much as other employers.

4. Whites living in richer, more educated, or whiter neighborhoods have higher callback rates, but blacks do not benefit from this neighborhood effect.In Chicago, employers located in black neighborhoods discriminate less against blacks.Source: www.povertyactionlab.com

SUGGESTED TACTICS FOR SUCCESS FOR WOMEN AND MINORITIESIn an interview with Chandra Prasad, author of Outwitting the Job Market: Everything You Need to Locate and Land a Great Position, Mrs. Prasad suggested tactics which may help women and minorities work around the discrimination obstacles that exist in the job market.

Chandra's first suggestion, for those who are in search of employment is for college students to ask their career service center about any potential companies that may be stopping by campus to interview potential employees, and to submit a resume in advance. "Also ask what scholarships and internships are available specifically for women and/or minorities."

Her second suggestion for locating a company that is truly diversity-friendly "is to speak with someone within the organization." If you know somebody who works in the organization you can ask questions, otherwise be "observant". Some of the questions Chandra advises to ask:

1. Look around as you’re on your interview—do you see a diverse staff or a homogenous one?

2. Are the executive level and board of directors comprised of only white men? That should send you a message right there.

3. If you establish a comfortable rapport with your interviewer and decide you want to out-and-out ask about diversity within the company, listen carefully to his response. Does your interviewer give a pat and insubstantial answer? Or does he provide real and compelling proof that the company is committed to diversity by citing actual percentages of women and minorities who are employed or by offering details on programs and initiatives aimed at the recruitment and retention of these groups?

4. Another way to check on a company is to scan the web site of the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). Each month the site posts reports on major litigation settlements by various employers.

Chandra also covers the importance of mentors for women and minorities in the job marker, as experienced workers may have contacts that lead to more job opportunities, and can offer the encouragement necessary to achieve one's career goals. The article states:A survey by Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization focusing on women in business [...] found that of 368 women of color, 69% who had a mentor in 1998 had at least one upward career move by 2001 compared to 49% of those who didn't have a mentor.

ON A BRIGHTER NOTEChandra concluded her interview with IM Diversity to say:The future looks very bright. Many companies are getting the message that the American demographic has shifted and will continue to shift. According to “Futurework: Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st Century,” a report from the Department of Labor, by 2050 minorities will rise from being one in every four Americans to one in every two. Of course, smart companies know that to serve a diverse clientele they need a diverse staff. That is why we see minority and female hiring on the rise and why this trend will certainly continue. The next test, I think, is not women and minorities succeeding in the workplace, but climbing to the highest ranks in substantial numbers—and helping others up.

I think there are certain alpha males (control freaks, egomaniacs) who naturally gravitate toward seeking power over cities, nations and the rest of the world, either through the means of capitalism or socialism or religion. These people think they have the right to rule, or that god is calling them, or that their ideas are the best, or that they are the best. And the more power and wealth they gain, the more sure they become of themselves and/or their particular ideas and "mission." Self-delusion is an evil escalating cycle.--Edward T. Babinski

Caption: While some Americans felt the threat to the principles of their Constitution posed by the Roman Catholic Church (as illustrated by this 1855 engraving), fewer were aware of the similar threat posed by the branches of Protestantism. In forging the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the founding fathers of the United States rejected orthodox Christian ideology. As the U.S. Senate ratified in 1797, "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

The democratic priniciples established in the United States were created in spite of Orthodox Christianity, not because of it. As a treaty written during George Washington's administration and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797 stated, "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Orthodox Christians repeatedly opposed religious freedom in America. The Puritan John Norton expressed the orthodox view of liberty of worship as "a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to seduce others from the true God. A liberty to tell lies in the name of the Lord." When Vermont passed a bill allowing religious liberty, the Dartmouth Gazette (November 18, 1807) echoed the orthodox sentiment, calling the bill a striking example "of the pernicious and direful, the infernal consequences to which the leveling spirit of democracy must inevitably tend."

During Thomas Jefferson's and James Madison's efforts to separate church and state, Madison pointed to history and argued that whenever "ecclesiastical establishments" had shaped civil society, they had supported political tyranny; never had they protected the people's liberties.

Organized Catholics have done no more than Protestants to support personal liberty and democracy. From opposing the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century, to establishing a precedent for totalitarian states with the Inquisition, to refusing to protest the attempted Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II, the Catholic Church has championed authoritarianism and opposed democracy and freedom. As the nineteenth century Pope Gregory XVI wrote:

It is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing, or of religion, as if they were so many rights that nature has given to man.

Power and authority should, in the eyes of the orthodox, be exercised only by those at the top of the hierarchy.

Excerpt, pg., 183-184, The Dark Side of Christian History, by Helen Ellerbe

Thus, with lisence granted by the Pope himself, inquisitors were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty. Dressed as black-robed fiends with black cowls over their heads, inquisitors extracted confessions from nearly anyone. The Inquisition invented every conceivable devise to inflict pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the body. Many of these devices were inscribed with the motto "Glory be only to God." The rack, the hoist and water tortures were the most common. Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Ovens built to kill people, made infamous in twentieth century Nazi Germany, were first used by the Christian Inquisition in Eastern Europe. Victims were thrown into a pit full of snakes and buried alive. One particularly gruesome torture involved turning a large dish full of mice upside down on the victim's naked stomach. A fire was then lit on top of the dish causing the mice to panic and burrow into the stomach. Should a victim withstand such pain without confessing, he or she would be burned alive at the stake, often in mass public burnings called auto-da-fé.

The Inquisition often targeted members of other religions as it did heretics. The Inquisition now lent its authority to the long-standing Christian persecution of Jews. Particularly during the Christian Holy Week of the Passion, Christians frequently rioted against Jews or refused to sell them food in hopes of starving them. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III required Jews to wear distinctive clothing. In 1391 the Archdeacon of Seville launched a "Holy War against the Jews." By 1492 the Inquisition in Spain had become so virulent in its persecution of Jews that it demanded either their conversion to Christianity or their expulsion. Muslims experienced little better. Not surprisingly, Islamic countries offered far safer sanctuaries to escaping Jews than Christian lands.-Excerpts from page 83-86, The Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe

Martin Luther believed that differences in gender, class, race, and belief indicated superior and inferior states of being. In 1533 he wrote, "Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops." In 1525 he supported the merciless suppression of the Peasants' War, a rebellion that his own spirit of independence from the Roman Church had helped to ignite. Although Luther could find no scriptural warrant for exterminating Jews, he believed that they should be enslaved or thrown out of Christian lands and that their ghettos and synagogues should be burned.-page 99, The Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe

I've heard if you don't know where you've been, it's difficult to know where you're going.Do you believe that centuries-old anti-semitism from the time of Christ, helped Hitler's popularity and rise to power? I have one book here, called "Hitler's Cross", by Erwin W. Lutzer, and Ravi Zacharias (Moody Press), I purchased from a resource for Messianic Jewish Books, very interesting, on page 62, the author states:

"Hitler offered himself as a messiah with a divine mission to save Germany. On one occasion he displayed the whip he often carried to demonstrate that "in driving out the Jews I remind myself of Jesus in the temple." He declared, "Just like Christ, I have a duty to my own people." He even boasted that just as Christ's birth had changed the calendar so his victory over the Jews would be the beginning of a new age. "What Christ began," he said "I will complete." In a speech just days after becoming chancellor, he parodied the Lord's Prayer, promising that under him a new kingdom would come on earth and that his would be "the power and the glory. Amen." He added that if he did not fulfill his mission, "you should then crucify me."

Hitler did become a god for millions. Rudolf Höss, commander of Auschwitz, stated before his execution in 1947 that he would have gassed and burned his own wife, children, and even himself if only the Führer had commanded it. Much of the nation came under the spell of a man who was hailed as the long-awaited Savior of a people who had become weary of poverty and humiliation.

At one of the Nuremberg rallies, a giant photo of Hitler was captioned with the words, "In the beginning was the Word." The Lord's Prayer was changed by some to read, "Our Father Adolf who art in Nuremberg, Hallowed be thy name, the Third Reich come..." If you did not say, "Heil Hitler!" when you entered a restaurant or a business establishment, you would not be served.Hitler's Cross by Erwin W. LutzerThe Revealing Story of How the Cross of Christ Was Used As a Symbol of the Nazi AgendaAvailable at amazon.com

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The U.S.A., for example, has 300,000,000 residents, but yet there is still numerous areas of land with little or no residents. Ditto for Canada, Russia, and some parts of Asia and Africa. A lot of people inhabit metropolitan areas and coastal areas, thus resulting in a high density figure. As a generalization, if people were better distributed geographically, a "wildly overpopulated world" would not be your statement.

Ed: It's this argument that "there's still land to live on" that makes me want to strangle idiots like Rush Limbaugh and his Republican cronies. Sure we could cram every person on earth onto the island of Zanzibar, if we all stood nose to nose. The POINT about population problems, is that the world contains lots of places where it's next to impossible to live, places that lack fertile soil and drinkable water, or enough water for crops to grow. And much of the earth consists of deserts and mountainsides and flood plains, and tornoado alleys, and fault lines, and dry scrublands and canyons and jungles where it's difficult to live, to say the least. (Not to mention that "spreading people out more" also leaves a food "distribution" problem, and health care distribution problem, etc.)

As for water, PARADE magazine had a front page article asking whether or not we would have enough in the coming decades for everybody on earth. Ground water pollution levels continue to rise, and areas of America and the world already are experiencing droughts and water shortages. My own town can't even process all the sewage and we've had contiminants in our water supply for decades now, sometimes people DIE just from drinking it. Not to mention that with industrialization came a huge increase in the needs and uses of water in general. Then there's the garbage factor and the recycling factor. Even at the present level of population, our low level of recycling and adding new pollutants will eventually kill mankind, we have to reduce those levels, and one way would be to simply reduce the population.

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Our prez, the dubiously honorable, George "Squeaked by on Election Night (or Election Month)" Bush must think he's got a mandate from his evangelical god on high to dare to nominate such a controversial and divisive candidate as John Ashcroft for Attorney General (grooming him for a seat on the Supreme Court no doubt).

John Ashcroft is so partisan he has praised a neo-Confederate magazine, SOUTHERN PARTISAN, for "defending partriots like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis," adding, "We've got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Which raises the question: Was slavery not a "perverted agenda?" The cause of state's rights wasn't being defended during the Civil War purely as an abstraction. It was linked to the right of the states to maintain slavery. Indeed, the last meeting that Jefferson Davis walked out on in Washington was one in which the federal government refused to extend slavery to the newly acquired western territories. Davis walked out ON THAT ISSUE, which Lincoln and his party would not compromise on. Indeed, it was that issue that got Lincoln elected in the first place: NOT to extend slavery to any of the newly acquired western terrritories. Moreover, Ashcroft and the SOUTHERN PARTISAN seem oblivious to general facts of related to the Civil War, including quotations from Jefferson Davis advocating slavery in ways that most people today have no trouble recognizing as a perverted agenda. Here's the facts that somebody needs to stuck up Croft's Ash:

When the Confederate states drew up their constitution, they added something the colonial founders had voted to leave out, namely, an invocation of the Deity. The South's proud new constitution began: "We, the people...invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God...".[Charles Robert Lee, Jr., The Confederate Constitutions (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963), p. 170].

Southern clergymen and politicians even argued that the South was more "Christian" than the North, it was the "Redeemer Nation.".[Charles Wilson, Baptized in Blood (1980)].

"With secession and the outbreak of the Civil War, Southern clergymen boldly proclaimed that the Confederacy had replaced the United States as God's chosen nation.". [Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 193f.]

Even prior to the War, South Carolinian politician, James Henry Hammond, boasted, "Our denominations are few, harmonious, pretty much united among themselves [especially on the issue of slavery - ED.], and pursue their avocations in humble peace...Few of the remarkable Isms of the present day have taken root among us. We have been so irreverent as to laugh at Mormonism and Millerism, which have created such commotions farther North; and modern prophets have no honor in our country. Shakers, Dunkers, Socialists, and the like, keep themselves afar off. You may attribute this to our domestic Slavery if you choose [the slaves being taught what to believe only by members of the 'few, harmonious' Southern churches - ED.]. I believe you would do so justly. There is no material here [in the South] for such characters [from the North] to operate upon...A people [like we Southerners] whose men are proverbially brave, intellectual and hospitable, and whose women are unaffectedly chaste, devoted to domestic life, and happy in it, can neither be degraded nor demoralized, whatever their institutions may be. My decided opinion is, that our system of Slavery contributes largely to the development and culture of these high and noble qualities...". [Drew Gilpin Faust, ed., The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), Chapter IV., "James Henry Hammond: Letter to an English Abolitionist," pp. 180, 181, 183, 184. Ironically, some of Hammond's "noble qualities" included seducing four of his young nieces. Later, his wife left him when he refused to stop seeing one of his female slaves by whom he had fathered a child. And Hammond told a close friend in 1857 that he was curious about the northern "Ism" called "Spiritualism." See, Carol Bleser, The Hammonds of Redcliffe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 9-12, 24.

Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, went further than Hammond in arguing for the superiority of southerners. A year after the war began, Davis publicly called northerners "miscreants," adding, "Were it ever to be proposed again to enter into a Union with such a people, I could no more consent to do it than to trust myself in a den of thieves...There is indeed a difference between the two peoples. Let no man hug the delusion that there can be renewed association between them. Our enemies are...traditionless.". [Lynda Lasswell Crist, Mary Seaton Dix, and Kenneth H. Williams, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), Vol. 8, p. 567.]

Speaking of the South's "traditions," Jefferson Davis boasted, "It [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts...Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible...I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation...Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized, sanctioned everywhere.". [Jefferson Davis, Vol. 1, by Dunbar Rowland, pp. 286 & 316-317.] Davis' defenses of slavery are legion, as in his speech to Congress in 1848, "If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree."

After 1856, Davis reiterated in most of his public speeches that he was "tired" of apologies for "our institution." "African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.".[Dodd, pp. 107, 154, 168. ] Or, as Davis reiterated after being elected President of the Confederacy, "My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."[. Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict But Never Learned (New York: Avon Books, 1996), p. 156.]

If you read the Liberal press, like The Nation magazine, they point out that the Florida governor Jeb Bush passed a law not allowing felons who served their time in other states, to register to vote in Florida. So any felons moving to Florida who went to register to vote for the presidential election were denied their voting priviledges. This incensed a lot of voters, because THERE IS NO FEDERAL MANDATE FOR SUCH A LAW that requires A GOV. to "doubly pardon" a felon from ANOTHER STATE if they have already served their time in that other state. This law of Jeb's was unconstitutional, and denied a lot of people their right to vote. One Black felon who'd served time in prison in another state ten years before, and who was now a minister and helping poor people was incensed at his voting priviledges being denied him in last year's election.

Furthermore, Jeb hired out the job of producing a list of ineligible voters to a company run and owned by staunch Republicans, and their list contained thousands of people who WERE NOT FELONS and who TRIED TO VOTE only to be turned away at the poles as "felons." Jeb even put up barricades at Black polling places and police to move those folks along even after they complained about being denied their voting priviledges. Tens of thousands were denied their right to vote. Including a majority of Blacks.

Jeb also abolished affirmative action in Florida during his governance there.

There is a pattern of denying Black and Hispanic felons, and Black and Hispanic citizens (incorrectly listed as felons on the ineligible voter lists), and of abolishing affirmative action. That pattern was, according to the liberals, old Jim Crow injustice (from the post Civil War era) rearing its ugly head again. Why? Because those minorities are predominantly DEMOCRATIC.

That's what the liberal press says. I don't know enough about it myself. Though we all DO know that Pat Buchanan did not get ten thousand ballots in the predominantly Jewish county with the butterfly ballot. What's sad about the butterfly ballot case is that it's so easy to spot that a MAJOR flaw has occured.

A major injustice in counting people's true votes inother words. If you compare the votes Pat got in all other Florida counties, even the most conservative and reactionary ones, you can see a HUGE spike for Pat in the ballot count of the one county with the huge elderly Jewish population that used the butterfly ballot. That's _ten thousand_ votes right there. And Gore only needed a couple hundred.

When you add up all of the above, it's clear that we have a fraud for a president. A man who cannot accept the real majority of the people's will along with the popular vote that Gore won. A man of integrity would not have accepted the results of such an ILL-ection, and certainly would not have pushed for such a speedy victory when he was ahead only a few hundred votes in a state of millions of voters. In my opinion Bush is not the president elect, and is just as dishonorable as every other scoundrel in Washington whom he portrays himself as being "above."

Lastly, Robert Anton Wilson points out that BOTH candidates received an equal 500,000 dollars in campaign funding from over 50 Fortune 500 companies. Our presidental contenders were both frauds so far as the people's will was concerned.

I called Coral Ridge Ministries (1-800-988-7884) and asked if last Sunday was the first time the sermon "More Evidence for God" was preached. They told me it actually aired for the first time on April 11, 1999.

The sermon was particularly atheist-bashing, even by Kennedy's standards. The version on their website is considerably abridged. In the television version, he slams both Huxley and Bertrand Russell, another one of his favorite atheist poster boys for depravity. He tells (again) the story of how degenerate Russell was, and of course, it was due to his atheism.

In case you haven't heard it, the story is that BR liked to cheat on his wives and seduce his friends' wives and daughters. Kennedy's usually kind of vague about the particulars, but in this sermon, he adds some details about how BR's dear friend (no name) once invited him to his mansion, and he ended up seducing his 16-year-old daughter.

Kennedy probably surmised this information from a book called "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson (Harper & Row, 1988). He's touted it in several of his sermons. Naturally, I got a copy of the book a few years ago when I first heard these accusations against BR. It's a pot pourri of chapters, each one dedicated to the evils of a secular intellectual (deist, sceptic, or atheist) who "felt himself bound by no corpus of revealed religion." Yet these "mentors" were "just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs."

In the chapter on BR, it discusses his political views, philosophy, and his interest in women. He liked sex, and openly committed adultry. But his wives knew it, and he didn't try to hide it from them. He was an "open-marriage" kind of guy, and allowed one of his wives to have affairs, too (the others didn't try). This alleged "16-year-old" daughter of a friend is probably Helen Dudley. Here's the excerpt about her:

"Then in 1914 followed a discreditable episode with a young girl in Chicago. Helen Dudley was one of four sisters, the daughters of a leading gynaecologist, with whom Russell stayed while lecturing. According to Russell's account, 'I spent two nights under her parents' roof, and the second I spent with her. Her three sisters mounted guard to give warnings if either of the parents approached.' Russell arranged that she should come to England that summer and live with him openly, pending a divorce. He wrote to Lady Ottoline [his then-mistress] telling her what had occurred."

I don't know how D. James Kennedy figured out she's 16 years old from this. I'm sure if she had been, Johnson would have mentioned it. Probably just another one of his "lies, damn lies."

One thing I noticed about this past Sunday sermon, though, was at the end of it, when he devotes about 10 minutes to a year-in-review of the ACLU's activities. Erwin Lutzer is a featured speaker. Lutzer is the other author who mentions the Huxley quote in his book "Exploding the Myths that Could Destroy America." He's the one Kennedy legitimately cited in one of his books, although Lutzer didn't provide any citation. So, the two must know each other. You can take a look at it from here.

Just click on "ACLU Update." Be prepared to gag at the whole thing. Lutzer's main concern is not letting gay people adopt babies.

Here's my latest sermon... you can compare it to Kennedy's. *smile* I am afraid I'm turning into quite a ranter with age.

Yes, I agree with the Rev. D. James Kennedy at least in the factual sense that the agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell, committed adultery, so did the evolutionist, Julian Huxley, and Julian's wife too I think, just google up the newly published letters of "Mary Sarton" for more info. However, Julian and Julliette Huxley also lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, which Kennedy no doubt forgot to mention. Neither did he mention the famous people in the Bible, nor famous modern day ministers who also committed "adultery," nor the famous men in the Bible with multiple wives and concubinage partners. Here's two verses forKennedy, "judge not," and, "first remove the beam from your own eye."

Of course elevating "sexual escapades" to the worst of sins overlooks that Christians persecuted fellow Christian "heretics," Jews, Muslims, witches, executed adulterers, kept women subservient, and disciplined children with the rod. Christian men like Luther and Calvin helped incite people to do such things. And right after the births of Lutherism and Calvinism there came perhaps the greatest war Europe has ever known (based on the percentage dead, its duration and the destruction it left behind, and no telling how much worse it would have been if both sides had modern weaponry like those used in the World Wars), I am speaking of the "Thirty Years War."

Today's secular wars were indeed horrendous, especially due to the world's increased population (since the late 1800s when vaccines and plumbing came into widespread use and reduced childhood illnesses) when cities were larger and hence more people existed who COULD be killed, and when more weapons existed to kill them quicker, easier, faster, and at longer ranges, more bullets, more artillery, more bombs, more gas, more tanks, etc. Dictators like Hitler, Mussolini basked in the "awe of rulers" that the churches had been busy INSTALLING IN PEOPLE'S MINDS FOR CENTURIES, along with centuries of anti-Semitic bigotry. Even communism had to pose as a "new religion," promising "paradise," a "worker's paradise," indoctrinating youth, doing everything religions do, and that includes the way Mao's little red book has raised high and waved about like a Bible by his followers, and memorized by them as well, verse by verse. And of course Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other communists also persecuted "heretics." The testimonies of American intellectuals who at first imagined that violent communistic revolution was the answer to the world's problems, then who repudiated communistic propaganda, is captured in a book appropriately titled, "The God That Failed." Yes, "the God."

Also, Kennedy mistakes all of America's blessings as being due to its "Christian heritage," but he neglects to mention America's Deistic heritage and classical heritage, equally strong influences, even moreso at her founding. "God" yes, but not of a particular religion, and not one who would be offended by "freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press," nor even by a deliberate neglect of the mention of the word "God" in our Constitution. Unlike both a theocracy or communism, one has to let the people read and believe what they will. However that also opens up the possibility of one religion gaining enough converts to be able to exert considerable sectarian force on such a government, as seems to be happening today. Though in the end, pollution, population, and greed may be the forces that bury every nation, regardless of its founding principles or religious majority. Not a cheery thought.

But of course conservative Christians are comforted even by that thought, putting a rosy hue even on the "end of the world." Their God will never fail them, not even as mankind sees its own extinction approaching on the horizon, because they can always convince themselves "it's part of God's plan." What if it's not part of God's plan, but of our own ignorance? What if we might be able to do something about things NOW if we protested the use of trillions of dollars each year by all the nations on earth to build things that simply go boom? If we used the money to develop alternative energy and recycling technologies (and to build technology to protect us from incoming asteroids)? If we used the money to pay people to get vasectomies in the most overcrowded regions on earth? If mankind woke up to its situation, living on a tiny lifeboat hanging in space, instead of damning each other to hells both in this life and in the next, and arguing over jots and tittles in holy books, or greedily devouring huge coporate bonuses and consuming junk food and junk entertainment and junk, period. Ah, but isn't that the primate way? Amusing ourselves to death I'd say, with religious entertainments being a primary form of such amusements that will continue to grow as the death of our species nears.

Kuwait's recent elections went to the fundamentalist Muslim party, and Islamic fundamentalism is growing in the highly westernized nation of Turkey. The southern hemisphere of earth is also growing in fundamentalistic religious believers, even in communist China. I also heard that people in China are having increasing psychological problems, not enough psychiatrists. Increasing pollution also. And water shortages in the bigger cities where more and more people from China's countryside are moving. And there pollution in the holy land of the Near East, and water shortages there as well, and in India and Pakistan. Most of the rivers in America are polluted, many lakes deemed unsafe to eat fish caught in them. And big ocean fish vanishing, fished out of the seas. Dead zones in the oceans. Ground water pollution levels rising. Superfund toxic pollutant dumpsites, leaking, requiring a trillion dollars to clean up. Relatively few people are reading, or listening, compared to the increasing billions reading their Bibles and Korans. "Oh save us!" We cry, and God will laugh and say, "Hey, I gave you the technology, the earth's wealth, and you used it for junk, from junk food to coporate junkets, from internet porn to sectarian religious preachers selling tickets to heaven and damning the rest to hell. Hope you had fun! Times up, let's see what brewing on the next solar system over yonder."

I also need to add some mention in such a sermon that Christianity, like Islam, is one of the most perfect indoctrination/control systems that has yet evolved on earth. Once you convince people that you have the truth that their eternal souls depend on believing, and dangle both an eternal carrot and an eternal stick in front of them, you don't NEED to brandish the earthly carrots and earthly sticks as much as, say, an atheist dictator would have to in order to maintain his desired strict control, because the basic "controlling" elements are already cemented in place internally. Though such internal religious control elements do tend to heighten fear and increase competition among alternative religious belief systems, such as rival Christian theologies and rival religions. So everything is never completely well in a religious country, or in countries that boarder each other and favor rival religions. (An atheistic country without a dictator, however, seems quite well off, and can have a low crime rate, like Czhechoslovakia today. )

And one must also admit that fear of big earthly sticks does seem to have worked effectively for communist China, since her crime rate continues to be the lowest on earth per capita, though that didn't hold true of communist Russia, but then, the Russians do tend to like their vodka, and the Chinese were a more sober and Confucian-like people to begin with. The American justice system, one must add, weilds it's earthly stick on its own people with less force than China does on her own people, since America prefers to simply lock people up, and presently has more of its population incarcerated than any other nation on earth, where it also tries to convert them. However, America's prisons contine to remain the fullest on earth, regardless of attempts to impose religion on repeat violators. Yes, America, with churches everywhere and preaching in our prisons, and one of the highest rates of belief in "God" in the world barring Ireland and Iran, continues to have one of the world's highest crime and incarceration rates.

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I'm not exactly sure what "disturbs" people about the discussion of "hate" in the Bible. If you want to find verses about love you can find those too. But any student of the Bible should also realize how Luther and Calvin, for instance, dealt with the verses on love. They agreed that to love one's neighbor was fine, so long as God and His word weren't concerned, but if one's neighbor was blaspheming God or denigrating "the Word," then Luther and Calvin wouldn't give such a person even a glass of water if they were about to die of dehydration (Luther put it in those literal terms himself, see my quotations in chapter two of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists avail at www.amazon.com because by helping a blasphemer they would be helping to tear down God and the Bible, and "the Bible says we must serve God rather than man." I'm not saying that's the one and only possible interpretation of how Christians should act, but Luther and Calvin cited verses from BOTH testaments that certainly COULD be interpreteted that way, and since they held a very DEGNIGRATING idea of the power and sway of "original sin" on mankind, they believed that most of mankind was doomed anyway, while the rest required DISCIPLINE of a strict CHRISTIAN sort to try and keep them away from "sin." Today, people have a less denigrating idea of original sin and just nonchalantly sum up the doctrine as "well, we're all sinners, ha." So natually, they don't go about stressing the need to "hate those whom the Lord hates, with perfect hatred," and they don't stress that they need to "serve God rather than man," and hold hard line views on disciplining their children and society.

IN SHORT, the ATTITUDES of people toward original sin and toward each other have changed since Luther and Calvin's day, and hence the BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION changed as well. And that makes one realize how dependent biblical interpretations are on the cultures and attitudes of the people doing the interpreting. The same could be said of the question of interpretation of the pro-slavery passages in the Old and New testaments, and how the times changed, and THEN the interpretation changed.

Anyway, here's some more recent news concerning "imprecatory prayer," it's not restricted to three essays by home schooled children on the web.

In 1994 the Capitol Hill Prayer Alert, a Washington D.C.-based prayer group, produced a list of twenty-five Democratic incumbents, and urged prayer partners to petition God to bring evil upon the people on that list. "Don't hesitate to pray imprecatory Psalms over them," wrote one of the group's founders, Harry Valentine, in the group's newsletter. Imprecatory means to "call down evil upon." Such Psalms include: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." (Ps. 109:8,9) "Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into Sheol." (Ps. 55:15)

"The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance: he shall wash his own feet in the blood of the wicked."(Ps. 58:10) (How is this different from sticking pins in voodoo dolls, or whipping up a witch's brew and mumbling curses?I guess it's all right for Christians to "curse" people so long as they use a "Biblically sound" method. - Skip)- Skipp Porteous, "Election '94 Observations," Free Inquiry, Winter 1994/95

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